THE BALLAD OF HAROLD THE BOLD

Louisa is afraid my cameos of life in Goolma, captured in song, are inappropriate. And so they are. But people love them. Even those the songs are about. Billy Moore is clever enough to see the comedic exaggeration in my ballad in praise of his bovine bovver boys. Harold certainly enjoyed hearing his special song. It is the story about New Year's celebrations from 2 years ago when Harold starred in a dramatic incident when midnight tolled. A very "Goolma" moment.

THE BALLAD OF HAROLD THE BOLD

There’s a story of old about Harold the Bold
Whose pub is of legendary fame
I’ll tell you a story so ghastly and gory
How Harold the Bold got his name

When it comes to carousal and sexual arousal
Harold’s pub’ not the ideal
But if it’s hard drinking and sin without shrinking
His venue has quite the right feel

So it came to pass in that palace of glasses
That Xmas had come and had gone
The regulars had hardly shifted their arses
Before the New Year had been born.

Inspired by grog and how much he could flog
Bold Harold was flushed with good cheer
He decided he’d shout all the drinkers about
To keep them as patrons all year.

But try as he may with something to say
He just couldn’t make himself heard
So he jumped on the bar and held up his arm
To give his good patrons the word.

No sooner had Bold Harold stood in his place
Than he was struck down by a blow
A treacherous ceiling fan launched him in space
And hurtled him deep down below.

To the floor of the bar where the sharp objects are
Fell the soft head of our host
He bled from a cut on his arm they said, but
It was his soft head that bled most.

Unseen by the mob which was sodden with grog
Poor Harold lay injured and bleeding
Only one person was sober for certain
And saw what poor Harold was needing.

She bandaged his arm and raised the alarm
By making an ambulance call
Ands one to the priest just in case he deceased
If the ambulance made it at all.

It is said that the party was jolly and hearty
With many a thought for Bold Harold
Who was sent to hospital not by his fall
But his stop when he dropped like a barrel.

His generous attempt to shout us prevented
By ceiling fan already mentioned
History would have been made, he intended
But for divine intervention.

Where the strong beer is sold the legend is told
How Harold the Bold was sent reeling
And they gather each night in the hope that he might
Fight round two with that fan on the ceiling.

©Michael Kiely 2007

the sky was blue and high above

This momentous sky...
you can't hide from the skies out here.
They're in your face.
You turn around and ... wow!

I saw this while patching the fence around the hay shed which had been invaded by sheep and given a bit of an upside down haircut...



They look like they need to break in to the food store, don't they...

We meet Con the Fruiterer at a Sustainability Conference

What a surprise to get an email from Mark Mitchell, aka Con The Fruiterer, at the Business Council for Sustainable Energy conference last week. He didn't know we'd be there. We didn't know he'd be there. Mark has been part of our Inspired Circle
of Friends ssince he got in touch with us about Adoptasheep several months ago and we discovered that he is a gifted inventor/engineer in the sustainable energy space.



Con had a lot of very serious points to make about climate change and global warming, hidden in the humour that had the room rocking for an hour. The best line of the night was his exhortation to politicians and public servants to keep producing millions of tonnes of paper reports each year and storing them in filing cabinets as they are sequestering CO2 that way.

My version of that concept is that we should be encouraging people to get fat, obese even, because they store carbon.The world should be pigging out as fast as it can.

Jessica gets some media

This article appeared in the Daily Telegraph this week:

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JESSICA Kiely runs the FRANK team, which does career and entrepreneurship training for young people at schools, universities, colleges and councils.

Describe your business?

It involves holding workshops and programs for young people on how to start their careers and how to start their own businesses.

It began about six years ago in 2001. There was nothing like this when we were at school, which is why we're doing it.

How long ago was that?

Well I'm 30 now. This was the second business I've started up. My first business was tutoring.

We've found that not many people who should be in a position to help are very friendly and helpful when you're young. They tend to be patronising and not take you seriously.

But there is a real need to inspire young people, to help them if they want to run their own businesses. We've moved into the career areas as well now, because the schools are demanding it.

There are some key skills that young people need these days. They no longer get a job for life, they need to be in control of their work and they need to build the skills to give them that control. The new rule is that they have to be skilled up and ready for that reality.

We've also ended up in front of parents and teachers. They need to understand what their children are doing too.

How do you make money?

We get paid for our presentations by the schools, universities or corporations.

How long did it take before you made a profit?

We started in 2001 and we were probably making a profit after six months. There weren't a lot of set-up costs as we were running the business from home where we had no overheads. We've now leased an office for the first time.

For the first four years I did all the paperwork, but we've now got a book-keeper and an accountant to take care of that. And we have project managers who managing the bookings.

How many people are involved in the business?

There are five people in the Sydney headquarters, including me and my business partner. Then we have 27 facilitators around Australia.

They are independent contractors and we pay them per booking, so they can run their own businesses as well. The FRANK team has now worked with thousands of people in every state of Australia, as well as some overseas countries.

Did you ever think you would get this big?

The idea in the first place was that it would have an impact on young people. It was always about doing it well and then getting other people to do it.

What sort of qualifications do you need?

I did economics and social science at Sydney University and majored in eduction and psychology. I've trained up on other things too. I love those courses that you can do in one day.

How is your business different from your competitors?

When we first started there wasn't much difference. Now there is, mostly because schools and the Government see that education needs to change and the information kids get access to also needs to change to deal with the reality.

All our facilitators are amazing young people - they are role models, they are all young, under the age of 32.

Also we go to the schools, they don't have to come to us. We offer the complete program, with the facilitator, activities and a comprehensive customer service program.

What has been your biggest challenge along the way?

The biggest challenge is our growth. Previously it's been organic, but now we're expanding quickly so managing that growth and cashflow and staff is the toughest thing at the moment.

We need to put systems in place so we can cope better. At the moment our strategy is writing our systems manual. It's very boring. It's like putting together a franchise manual.

Where will your business be in five years' time?

We've got global aspirations. Singapore, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, potentially Japan. We can get over the cultural differences by recruiting local people.

What has been your biggest stroke of luck or piece of good planning?

The biggest thing we did really well is our website. We put a lot of work into it. We did a program last year in Bahrain because they found us on the internet.

How did you get your name?

Originally we were called Youth 2 Youth, and we worked with mainly young people aged 15 to 35.

But then a lot of older people wanted to be part of our workshops so we decided we'd get a new name.

In 2003 we'd started a magazine for girls that we called Frank, because the content of the magazine was up front, and also it was different to call a girls' magazine a boy's name. So we decided to re-use that name.

Any advice for budding entrepreneurs?

Give it a go. Don't take too much time planning as that can stop you. The best way to learn is to do it.

What's your web address?

www.frankteam.com.au

SNAKE!

In less than a week we had a black snake (red belly) and a brown snake come to visit. What am I saying - they live with us! The black snake first appeared in the tool room next to the shed. The next time it appeared in amazing circumstances: we were sitting on the front verandah at dusk talking about snakes with a person who was a bit psychic. And I mentioned the local furphy that there were bluebellied blacksnakes down by the river and wondered out loud if they were a totem for the original owners of the land when a black 'shadow' seemed to run along the top of the fence in front of us, and at the same instant I looked down and at my feet (I was sitting on the steps) a black snake was trying to force its way into a small crevice between the stpes and the house. We all jumped up and ran inside, but our visitor's black labrador was attacking the snake, so I ran out and grabbed the dog and pulled it away. But by this time the snake was gone, presumably under the house. Did we see it? What did it mean? Daniel tells me he confronted it coming upthe footpath leading to the house one night. SO the latest sighting is a couple of weeks ago, in the above photo. It made its lesiurely way out fromunder Daniel's cottage, out under his car and into the grass beside the stables.

Then within days we have a visit from the big brown snake that also inhabits where we inhabit. The first time I heard of him/her/it, our manager said he had seen a "king brown" in the shearing shed and he wasn't going in there again. ("Anything to get out of work," I thought. But then I saw the snake's slide marks in the sand leading down towards the stables. On another occasion - during one of our droughts - I came across it crossing the road going towards the river. ANd the last time I saw it, I was reaching down to pick up some star pickets from in the grass and through the fence I saw in a small window between the grass a snake's skin pattern moving slowly along. It was brown. The latest visit came when we were out in the vege garden, digging out the weeds. It was detected by your Connor Grealish who drove over it on a quad bik and raised the alarm. Daniel coaxed it out of the grass and chased it up to the stables. (Ironically Daniel had a statement of the incidence of the high percentage of people who had died from snake bite whwile trying to kill the snake.)
I ran in to get the camera but it was all over. However I found it had shed part of its skin while escaping. It was two and a half meters long. Snake Info: Brown snakes are deadly. Aggressive. Territorial. Black snakes are less aggressive and are said to keep brown snakes away. Ours is a lazy bludger in that regard. Never try to kill a snake. If you find yourslef close to on, stop dead still. They are blind and rely on movement to target their prey. Stand still unless you can levitate at the speed of sound. Like I do. By the way, snakes have a job to do in the natural world. Don't kill them. Just be careful. Real careful.